Surfing Waves

I have been looking at the spectrial on MS any advise on how to read it? what is swell one 2 3 etc

Thinking of going HM on sat an MS says 12 ft 10 seconds?

Any advise would be appreciated

Johno wrote:I have been looking at the spectrial on MS any advise on how to read it? what is swell one 2 3 etc

The spectrals break down the individual swells. The 'normal' forecast gives you one swell and one direction - but as Im sure you can imagine, there's all kinds of things going on.

There may be several swells with different periods and sizes etc at once. And these different swells can overlap, add up, or act against each other.

So swell 1, 2, 3.... is simply the different swells at a given (forecasted) moment. So look at the different swells - if they're all going in roughly the same direction, then you might be looking at a build up of swell.

Or maybe one swell at say 12ft 10s, and another at 2ft 5s, you could more or less ignore the second one.

The cleanest (and easiest to forecast) is one nice powerful swell with a decent period, for a long length of time. But you're in the UK, so thats a bit rare!

...oh, and hells mouth is likely to be small on saturday. There's a big ol' swell running down the atlantic but its a northerly so its got to wrap around ireland to hit the UK (apart from scotland) and it wont wrap back up the irish sea to Hells Mouth. Might be a small something, but not 12ft. Or even 2ft.

Cheers Dbb

What other sites does every one use for predicting swell are there any better ones than MS

Hmm...interesting DBBB, never looked at the spectrals before; some useful info there.

Ta.

Johno wrote:What other sites does every one use for predicting swell are there any better ones than MS

MSW is okay as long as you use it as a forecasting tool rather than a forecast. That is, take a look at the 'raw data' - swell height, direction, period, wind speed/direction and make a judgement on that rather than its star ratings or just on swell height. Particularly important is to take note of the direction of the swell as MSW doesnt deal with that very well.
It quite often has a good swell for the south coast when the swell is apparently coming from.... dorset

Other than that, there's nowt like the traditional pressure charts

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/

This can help

Just looked at the charts and other link looks complicated? and headn recking

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=62107

This is for the west coast. When you are on the home page with the global map, click on the uk. Then pick which bouy you want.